Potato harvesting process

[mhrfm]

First time gardener here, and I’d like to verify the potato harvesting process.

I head to the beds and gently get the potatoes out. I gently brush the dirt off. Take them to the garage.

Do I need to give them time to dry before placing in hessian bags?

[Mr Bones]

It's best to leave them somewhere dark and airy for a couple of weeks until the skins set. It also lets you check for bad ones before they go into storage. When transferring into storage sacks check again for damage and slug holes and place any affected into a use first pile which is kept away from the others. Once in storage a bad spud can affect others around it plus you really don't want to find a gloopy tater when dipping your hand into the dark bag.
For storage make sure it's somewhere frost proof, dark and preferably not somewhere bone dry (damp cellar is ideal). Pays too to open each sack periodically and take a good close sniff, you'll soon know if one's on the turn.

[Snadger]

.......or you can just lift them as you need them.

[Nicos]

There are quite a few YouTube videos out there on 'How to left and store potatoes'

You'll probably find them subtly different. That's one of the things about gardening, we have all worked out what works best for us.

We usually leave our spuds in the ground for as long as we can but we've noticed the voles have been tucking into some -food and moisture- so we'll have to lift them early this year to make sure we actually get to store some healthy ones!
Our soil is generally pretty dry so they don't rot.
Our previous allotment was on a very peaty soil so we had to lift them early or they rotted.

If you can choose a windy, dry day to lift them, just spread them on the surface for them to dry out a tad whilst digging up the rest. They won't go green instantly
As you say, brush off excess soil then we do as Bones suggests.

First year of potatoes eh?... yum!

Take a piccie and enter our competition ( is only for fun)

[burnie]

I live in the middle of the uk's main tattie growing area forthe Albert Bartlett firm(they have huge storage sheds in Brechin), they take the tops off the hulms(they are doing this as we speak), some farmers cut them off, some sadly use an acid spray to kill the tops. They then leave them in the ground for several weeks to "harden" them before harvesting and storing in large open top and side ventilated boxes, these then go into very dark sheds until they are needed for bagging and sending off to the retailers. I sort of follow their timings, but on a way smaller scale.

[Bren In Pots]

.......or you can just lift them as you need them.

That’s what I do, but then I don’t grow that many potatoes.

[bikermike]

I generally go
1) look at the plants, realise I should lift them
2) fail to do so until a hot dry day, and it's like breaking out concrete
3) get dissapointed by the yield
4) have masses of volunteer spuds next year...

More seriously, Dig, dry, knock the worst soil off (don't damage the skins doing it), keep the ones with damage back and eat soon, put the rest in dark and cool (I keep mine in hessian sacks or paper bags, which I put in cardboard boxes under a motorcycle cover in my garage).

[ESBkevin]

As others have said there are variations of a theme.

Cutting off the tops in advance has two benefits, one it helps harden the tubers, two it reduces the succeptability to potato blight.

We lift them sooner rather than later becuase we suffer slug damage if we drag the timetable out. Ideally we lift them to the surface and leave them in the sunlight a few hours (or overnight if it stays dry). Collect everything (even the pea sized tubers). Take them home and a day or two later do the sort into use now, baking spud, seed and rejects then bag in hessian sacks.

[Bonjour]

I'm another one who leaves them and digs as needed. We have quite dry, sandy loam, so we don't get too many rotten ones. I generally lift the remainder of them sometime in November, before there is chance of frost.

[Chestnut]

I have never had a year without blight, so tend to take the haulms off as soon as the dark blotches appear, then dig all my spuds up the following weekend.
I brush the soil off, and leave on ground to dry until I have finished digging.
From there, they go into those flat cardboard boxes supermarkets use for fruit , spaced out and not touching each other. Boxes are stacked in garage with an old curtain suspended over the top to keep the light out (stops them going green).
Checked weekly for first few weeks so that any with rot and slug damage can be evicted and used first or discarded if I don’t think they’re safe for eating.

[Snadger]

What I think is important is.......what do you have ready to plant as the spuds come out (hate bare soil).

I've just received my Japanese overwintering onion sets and they will be going in, in succession as the tatties are dug.

[Nicos]

We got our leeks about a week after digging up our spuds

They got a wonderful watering in thanks to the weather!